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Why has the Democratic Party removed the sentence “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” from its platform? It was in the 2004 document but not in 2008’s or this year’s. Can’t Democrats just throw a crumb to the many millions who are pro-choice but not pro-abortion?

Last week, Democrats feasted on the extreme positions of Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri during the Republican National Convention. Yet Democrats have gone too far in the other direction, threatening their hold on the great American middle. Abortion is a more delicate subject than our fierce, partisan arguments would have it.

Because the Republican base contends that a fertilized egg has the same rights as a full, breathing human being, Republicans are in favor of forced motherhood — regardless of its effects on an unwanted child. They have been promoting “personhood” legislation across the country, essentially dictating that the human clock starts ticking at conception.

Democrats, on the other hand, think that pregnancy is exclusively a woman’s business. And in the first trimester, at least, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling concurs. But over the years, Roe’s legal framework has been eroded by loopholes large enough for an eight-month-pregnant teenager to walk through. The “health of the mother” exception that enables abortions after viability takes into account psychological health. What 16-year-old wouldn’t be psychologically destabilized by an accidental pregnancy?

Polls show we are becoming a pro-life country; a slight majority likes to call itself that even though most Americans still support the pro-choice position in the first three months of pregnancy.

Abortion won’t be a defining issue for Democrats this election, but the party’s more militant posture guarantees that bipartisanship is still a long way off. On this issue, we can’t get along. But it wouldn’t hurt to put the word “rare” back in the platform.